


and it all falls down

by misura



Category: A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Gen, POV First Person, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 20:19:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I shall not talk about Moscow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and it all falls down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mithen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/gifts).



Moscow.

I shall not talk about Moscow.

 

People died. A great many people died.

Was it our fault? It cannot have been; things happened too quickly for that. For an explosion of this size to occur, one needs not only a spark but also a powder keg.

Were we, was our action the final straw?

I fear that this is the truth, however unpalatable. Not the fault, then, only the blame.

God.

 

"This cannot ever become a war," he told me, some few months back.

Naively, perhaps, I assumed he referred to the matter with the Royals. "Because they defeated us once already?" A not entirely safe thing to state in a Restorationist rookery, but then, I was among friends - or rather: I was in the company of the one man I considered my friend, and I had long since passed the point where the opinion of anyone else posed any sort of concern to me.

It seemed to me, on occasion, that this should bother me.

"Hardly a war, the way they tell it these days." There were stories of that time, but little else. None of the weapons, ineffective as they had been, nor any of the accounts that had surely been written.

"Then why?" As a military man, I confess this was how I had pictured it, at the end: a mighty clash of armies, with mankind eventually emerging triumphant. A hard-won victory, no doubt, and one I was not at all certain I would be fortunate enough to witness.

"War is a thing of men, my dear Watson," said he. "Men. Not monsters. Once we start killing our own kind, we might as well abandon the fight altogether."

"Well," said I, momentarily at a loss for words. "But some men are on Their side. The side of the monsters. Take that detective, for instance, back in London."

"Should I have killed him, do you think? When I had him in my cab, perhaps?" Mercifully, he spared me the need to answer. "But what a loss that would have been, to snuff out such an intellect. Wasteful."

"I - then what? How do we defeat them, if it's not in a war?"

His eyes gleamed. "A game, Watson. A great, deadly game of shadows."

I remembered the room at Shoreditch, the long wait, and what had come after. He was telling me now that there would be other rooms, other waits.

My sense of disappointment shamed me, for he was right, of course: the toll in human lives of waging a war would be much higher than if it were only he and I, working in stealth.

 

O, vanity! Thrice-cursed pride, to believe we might control the shape of things to come!

I am a fool.

I am a murderer of men.

 

Yes, we were there when they tore down the Tsar.

We had arrived to find the city in revolt. I shall not forget the sight. It humbled me, to see the truth of my friend's words displayed before my very eyes - as a soldier, I had fought barbarians; uncivilized savages with regard for neither common decency nor common sense.

They came at us, screaming, and we killed them. It was simply the way of things.

In Moscow, I witnessed civilized men and women taking up arms and turning against one another. Seven hundred years of peace, stripped away like a cheap layer of paint.

True, it had been a peace enforced my Them. Still, on that day, I realized that in my heart of hearts, I had believed that man was peaceful by nature. Civilized man, at any rate.

We would wage war on the barbarians, but among ourselves, we would handle matters civilly.

In Moscow, my eyes were opened to the truth, and it was a bitter one.

In Moscow, I - no. I shall not.

 

He spoke to me.

He spoke to me.

He spoke to me.

I will not forget.

He is dead.

Please stop.

 

There was a room in Moscow, yes. Like in Shoreditch, save that there was no need to lure our victim; it was her hiding place, I believe. We surprised her.

I had my knives with me.

What do you _think_ we did?

 

I already told you I don't know where he is.

We had words, after Paris; a falling-out. A difference of opinions.

He will not come for me.

I am alone.

 

No.

 

Because he is not a madman.

Because he is not suicidal.

Because I betrayed him.

 

He will kill you all, every last one of you.

 

Victoria Gloriana, Regina Maxima.

 

He is here.

**Author's Note:**

> this started out fairly standard - Moran already mentioned events in Russia, from which the jump to Moscow seemed easily enough, so I thought _vive la revolution!_ and figured I had caught myself a plotbunny.
> 
> and then about halfway through I realized that the plotbunny had caught me, actually, and that it was a mutant, possibly eldritch plotbunny, and also that the logical conclusion for this story would be for someone to die very messily (and consider himself lucky for doing so, inasfar as he'd still be capable of rational thought by that time) and I said a very bad word. and then I wrote this ending.


End file.
